Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

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Comments (90)

Reminds me of the idea of going in to a bank with a mask, handing over a note saying: "please hand me all of your money. No pressure. If you do what I ask I won't kill you." And then when you are arrested, you say first: it was a joke, ok, gee, can't you people take a joke? And when the joke falls flat, then you say: Look, READ THE NOTE. It merely asks you to do something, it doesn't demand anything at all. If you don't want to comply, you don't have to. It says "no pressure", that means there is no pressure. It doesn't threaten any harm to anyone. While it says that I won't kill if you do what I ask, it says nothing at all about what will happen if you don't. No demands and no threats.

Or, there's the way the police and courts would look at it: attempted theft with threat of violence.

The people who made the ad are terrorists, they just go about it in a pleasant manner is all.

Pardon the language.... But my God... This is horrific! I can't remember the last time I've felt so deeply offended by something. I watch horror films occassionally and have seen everything on the Internet and I couldn't even watch the whole thing. The people responsible for that video have some serious questions they need to be asking themselves. I have rarely seen such evil.

I won't watch anything that comes with that introduction, but it does occur to me to make the following connection: A few years ago Dawn Eden told on her blog about "pro-choice superhero" ads which involved fantasizing about gruesomely killing pro-lifers. Evidently they thought that was funny, too. So this trope crops up over a wider spectrum of left-wing passions.

Well, when all the other fallacious arguments of liberalism wear thin, it's time to bring out argumentum ad baculum. Such is the way of anarchistic tyrants who have long since abandoned the scientific theory in their quest for power.

Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called 'No Pressure’.

With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain's leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis - writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others – agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.

As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website. We won't be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet.

We'd like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.

At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn.

Onwards and upwards,

Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team"

That was on their site. One would probably need a very dark sense of humor to appreciate the item. Anyway, things often have layers and, as no one will believe me anyway, I'll peel you all back a few. If, by convincing enough people that climate change was some sort of leftish scheme to gain control over them, one could delay corrective measures until the earth's climate has reached an inflection point then larger goals could be achieved. Thank you Steve for once again helping out.

"If, by convincing enough people that climate change was some sort of leftish scheme to gain control over them, one could delay corrective measures until the earth's climate has reached an inflection point then larger goals could be achieved."

Oh, please do tell me, al, about these "corrective measures" and these "larger goals." I'm all ears.

This group must have the attitude that any publicity is good publicity, because I cannot believe that a professional comedy writer would honestly think this was funny. So I'll assume they were doing it to get free publicity, but it is publicity that makes it exponentially harder to accomplish their stated goal. Epic fail.

Despite their determination to be stupid they only represent one part of environmentalism, the radical conservation part. I still think that moving towards a sustainable energy future should be a strategic goal for America. Besides poisoning the Gulf and excessively polluting the air, an oil-based economy also helps fund those happy Middle Eastern groups of peaceful persuasion.

Hi Steve, only a typical conservative would try to draw a substantive point on a serious issue out of nonsense like this. As you seem too intelligent to believe that this video is a sign of anything other then bad judgment (and, as I have had a little experience with folks in the industry - video i.e., things that can lead to bad judgment, sniff, sniff :)) I can only assume that you see the inevitable significant reduction in human population that will go along with climate change as a good thing and are doing your part. Or perhaps you are a secret convert and believe our entanglements with carbon-rich nations will intimately lead to the downfall of we infidels.

Reducing our dependence on carbon would seem to make sense on a number of levels. It's easy to spin all sorts of theories once one begins to see politics as a team sport.

Appalling video. Those passive-aggressive Brits are rather more "advanced" than their American environmentalist counterparts. For the most part.

I still think that moving towards a sustainable energy future should be a strategic goal for America. Besides poisoning the Gulf and excessively polluting the air, an oil-based economy also helps fund those happy Middle Eastern groups of peaceful persuasion.

Could anyone post a summary of the video? I can't watch it, so I can't make any direct comments on it.

This group must have the attitude that any publicity is good publicity, because I cannot believe that a professional comedy writer would honestly think this was funny.

It is possible if there is no emotional commitment to the script by the writer. They can, in some cases, distance themselves from the action (and the audience) and objectify the humor (it has to do with a technical aspect of comedy writing called joke-competence - the relationship of the joke-teller to his audience). Since most of the audience has a subjective stake in the humor, these sorts of jokes often fail, although they can be hilariously interpreted by certain people in certain psychopathic situations. The technical term for this type of failed endeavor is a humor killer. They can be effective in calling attention to something, but the failed humor often is remembered more than the message.

Chicken-
from memory:
A classroom with a bunch of 12-14 year old kids in school uniform, teacher that looks like the divination teacher from Harry Potter.

She talks about this week's "cut your footprint" thing, and gives an example of things you can change. A couple of kids say what they'll change. She asks those who are going to cut back to raise their hands. Calls out, by name, the little boy and little girl who don't raise their hands.
"Oh, ok, you don't have to. No pressure." Bell rings, she says something like "Oh! One more thing!" Picks up a box with a big red button on it, pushes it, and the children explode. Lots of time spent focusing on the red chunks. Other children have chunks on them. The teacher has chunks on them. "Have a nice weekend!"
Same thing, this time with office drones.

At that point, I skipped to the end of the thing to see if it was disavowed, a prank, or if my money went into it.

The video is appalling and ought never have been made, and plenty of climate change activists have stated exactly that in the past day or so. To conclude despite this that it represents the heart of darkness lurking in all of us who view our ongoing experiment in climate modification with dismay is an absurd leap.

I don't disbelieve you, I just want to see something that's at least as strongly worded as my very conservative mother's response to the whole burning Korans thing.

I think y'all that still believe the balderdash about the climate being changed by man are wrong, and have been lied to, but I'd be much happier to know that you respond to something like this with disgust.

I must be stupid, Al, but I don't get your drift at all. Why don't you state your point directly in black and white so stupid people like me can follow along. What was the purpose of making this video? Which group did it, and what was their proximate goal, and what is their long-term goal in making it?

Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.

Gaaah! What with all the stupid politicians and ball-players doing fouled-up apologies recently, haven't people learned over the past several years how to avoid sounding completely insincere with their fall-back stance? This doesn't even approach toward a C on the apology scale, it is a flat out F, failure. They are clearly making out that the people who didn't "find it funny" are the ones who have some defect in them.

I suppose, according to Al, this apology was yet another part of the overall plan. Right? In addition to the skit being staged "for effect", so also was the apology.

I thought it was horrifying, and even if the explosions had not been accompanied by gore it would have been disturbing and not funny to me. Many people did find it funny. Why? Is the kind of person who would find that funny more likely to become an environmentalist or does embracing environmentalism tend to turn one into that kind of person?

So, from those comments, a correct and legitimate parallel is between the "offensiveness" of likening environmentalists to Hitler youth and fantasizing about blowing up little kids who aren't decreasing their "carbon footprint"???

There are always the over eager who blow the cover, give away the charade, and show the warts on the underside.
The world will be so much better when we all ride bicycles and pay higher taxes.
Ugly but hardly unexpected, the violence is just under the surface.

Yeah, the more I think about it, that denunciation Cyrus links is better than nothing but not really too good. They imply that the non-apology is a sufficient and legitimate apology, and they move on with unseemly haste to laying on the attempted tu quoques (which, at least in the "Hitler youth" case, fails) with a trowel. Plus the added implication that their opponents are _even worse_ because they don't denounce offensiveness like these guys are doing. I'm unimpressed.

I've checked out all the attempted tu quoques from "Climate Progress." IMO, none of them succeeds. Publishing e-mail addresses is not evil in itself, though obviously it should have come with a strong statement to readers that they should make their communications polite and substantive. It's not like these e-mail addresses were private, confidential information. I have been pleased before now when bloggers have posted e-mail addresses of people I might want to write to about issues of public interest. There should have been clear denunciation of hate mail, obviously, and the _implication_ is that there wasn't, but the phrases "they deserve to be publicly flogged" or "we should kick them while they're down" are absolutely obviously figures of speech and come nowhere close to fantasizing about blowing children up into chunks. And, hmmm, let's see, what else? Oh, yes, the connection of that suicide murderer with environmentalism, calling him a "warmista" in a headline ("When Warmistas Attack") based on his own statements.

Tony, you are over-analyzing this. This doesn't say anything except that it is really easy for a process to become closed off in a negative feedback loop and go off the rails with dire results - think Edsel and New Coke. The two students whose actions resulted in their target's suicide and their certain indictment intended to have some fun not ruin their lives.

Given the grossness of the thing and personal experience, I'm assuming lack of adult supervision and, as actually making something like this is an intensive and exhausting process, speculating - only speculating - that stimulating substances were involved.

There are lots of James O'Keefes out there and they are on all sides of any issue. What usually happens (as happened with O'Keefe in his latest escapade) is that an adult steps in. Someone at the story board stage of this venture needed to ask the team, "so our message is 'cut your carbon usage or we will blow you up?'" There would have been silence and that would have been that.

Awhile back there were a number of films (comedies) made that were a non-stop crack-up while being made and were flops once in distribution. Anything can be funny if you are high. In the event, it says nothing about climate change and environmentalists and a lot about command structure over at that organization.

That Steve chose this item as opposed to, say O'Keefe's latest dishonest venture is because Steve is an ideologue and O'Keefe is "friend" and this organization is perceived to be on "the left" and hence "enemy".

"I thought it was horrifying..."

I caught a Stallone flic last night that showed rather graphically what actually happens when a .50 MG opens up on flesh and blood. This was too disconnected from reality and message to be anything other then a "what the..."? It wasn't really funny but anyone who was actually shocked, horrified, or disgusted and who doesn't have a stake in presenting a positive message on energy use has led a very sheltered life.

There are those who hear hooves while in the middle of the Great Basin and think "zebras"; we call them conservatives. There are those who hear hooves in the middle of the Serengeti and think "zebras"; we call them liberals.

You'll notice that Al never thinks that anything bad that liberals do has anything to do with their being liberals. But he does think that being a liberal makes you smarter at figuring out *what's really going on*.

"That Steve chose this item as opposed to, say O'Keefe's latest dishonest venture is because Steve is an ideologue and O'Keefe is 'friend' and this organization is perceived to be on 'the left' and hence 'enemy'."

Oh, al.

What a silly comparison.

Trouble is, if I enumerate all the reasons why it's a silly comparison, you'll just disappear - as you always do, when your beads have been well and truly read.

Cyrus -
That's weaksauce. The guy seems upset that it will hurt his goals, and that's about it.

"The video is nasty, but the people who made it said they're sorry folks got upset, and they're great folks, and the people who are upset don't care about the children dying, and they're mean nasties who do so much worse!"

(on a side note, about the 'but they're bad' links: it's also pathetic to link secondary sources when primaries are available; at best, it's an attempt to increase page hits, and at worse it's a sign of being insecure in the persuasive ability of direct evidence. Given that the guys apparently can't wrap their heads around the notion that the folks they make accusations against don't believe what they do, it's probably the second option....)

And then stop, instead of going on to try to excuse it, say the other guys are worse, and claim that it's not that bad, really, because THOSE guys over THERE are worse, because they're EVIL and REALLY want to DESTROY US ALL!!!11!1!!

Instead, they go on and on about how it's harmful to the cause, and how horrible the folks on the other side are. (That would be...um... the sort who were blown up in the video. And that are characterized in this "denouncement.")

Imagine this:

I threaten to punch you in the nose.

Lydia, when people demand that she say something, says "that really wasn't helpful, but Fox means well, and anyway Cyrus is a big nasty male who is genetically complicit in the subjugation of the feminine sex. Nothing can excuse the use of physical violence, but you said something not nice (link to her saying you said something not nice) and you're one of the evil, subjugating men (link to her saying men subjugate women) and men are violent. (link to her calling men violent with a video of that astronaut clocking the guy who manhandled his granddaughter) Fox may have threatened violence, which isn't going to help promote women, but you men are all just trying to keep women down."

(Example made as silly as I could manage and not be utterly confusing.)

It's about as much a denouncement as the "apology" was an apology. Gee I'm sorry you didn't get the joke and it's not helpful to make gross videos about blowing up world-destroying nasty people who are worse, anyways.

Cyrus, I find your source rather doubtful on his disgust with the video. Let's take one of his examples of "hate speech" by people who don't believe in global warming caused by man. This example is about an event with Lord Monckton. (BTW, I had to drill through three links before actually finding out the circumstances of the "hate speech." One might think they are discouraging you from actually finding out the facts and just want you to take their word for it or are trying to increase clicks.)

The students entered the event in small groups, joining a paltry audience of five conference attendees, who had come to hear climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton speak about the Copenhagen climate negotiations. After the first five minutes of the event, student representatives from SustainUS, the Sierra Student Coalition, the Cascade Climate Network, and other American youth NGOs displayed banners reading “Climate Disaster Ahead” and “Clean Energy Now.” After security agents at the event took the banners, the young attendees began a chant of “Real Americans for Prosperity are Americans for Clean Energy.” [...]

“Clean energy creates jobs,” says Rachel Barge, a 24-year-old entrepreneur from San Francisco, CA who was the first young person to raise her voice at the event, “These climate action delayers and science deniers are stealing bold, new economic opportunities from the American public.”

As the protesters continued to chant, one of the AFP speakers, Lord Monckton, called the activists “crazed Hitler Youth” and “Nazis” (see video above).

Notice, he called the people who were disrupting his speech that. I don't know how that is hate speech. It's rather humorous that people who disrupt someone else's free speech then complain when someone calls them a name.

Also, I find it ironic that someone would complain about being called "Hitler Youth" while apologizing for a video that is blowing up kids who don't conform.

Chris and Foxfier are doing the yeoman's work, here. Yeah, it's good *as far as it goes* that those AGW guys called it disgusting, etc. Okay, fine. But their examples of tu quoques are _wretched_ and they move to them so indecently quickly that it's like the "you guys are so bad" point is their real message. It's ridiculous. And I didn't even know that Monckton's "Hitler Youth" remark was made about people who were chanting and disrupting his speech. Well, for crying out loud! And the global warming people call what he did "the worst." Okay, I'll see 'em and raise 'em five: If that's the _worst_, then they're a pair of ideologue idiots to compare it to this video. In fact, such a comparison only shows that they totally lack a sense of proportion, which is what the making of the video shows, too, about other AGW folks.

al, your 10/'3, 3:25
You have put your finger on the raw nerve of Western Civilization, leaped over the boundaries of the mundane to the dark heart of the matter, it's James O'Keefe.
Well done, you perspicacious dude you.

I can relax & not worry about those people who want me to roller skate to work & who repeatedly express their hate for themselves and the Normal People.
Thanks.

Wow. Just wow. Look at this. _This_ is what these people said _before_ they found out people were really disgusted by their video and gave that half-baked "apology." This is how they defended it in advance, at the Guardian. They thought about the disgustingness of it in advance and did it very deliberately because of their ideology. I'm working on getting a direct link. I got this quote at Wesley J. Smith's _Secondhand Smoke_. My emphasis added:

But why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask her: “Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that’s not worth jumping up and down about, I don’t know what is.” “We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change,” she adds. Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.” The public reaction to the film will be fascinating – please add yours below. Curtis, writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Blackadder and an early 10:10 supporter, acknowledges that the 10:10 film is very direct. “The 10:10 team are a fearless, energetic bunch, completely dedicated to getting the public fired up about climate change. They also turn out to be surprisingly good at blowing stuff up,” he said.

Yeah, real fearless. Gag.

Okay, now, folks on the other side: Please tell us again how this has _nothing to do with liberalism_. Please tell us again that Steve is wrong in the main post when he says,

The spirit of Lenin, and Stalin, and Mao, is alive and well, and hanging out amongst these deeply scary people.

In other words, they used the usual "ride the wave or be crushed by it" rhetoric in Darth Vader voice, it backfired, so they retreated to, "There's no one here but us moderate concerned citizen chickens."

Come on. That's just the wacky kind of British humour. It's meant in the spirit of 'Little Britain' and 'Monty Python', not in the spirit of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Personally, I think it's a complete failure and far from being funny. But nothing, of course, follows for liberalism or environmentalism.
If you want to stick to your 'right' to blow up the ressources of future generations and to erase more and more species, try to argue for that, Steve and Lydia, but don't hide behind your righteous indignation about a childish video.

Lydia, I followed some of the links in Westley's articles as well as others and they only confirm my original assumptions. What we had was a process that let the creative folk run wild. There is a reason why films have producers as well as actors, writers, and directors.

As you seem to put a lot of stock in Westley and, as his column on one of Tom Friedman's pieces in the NYT clearly demonstrates his confusion over just what liberalism is, it is hardly surprising that you would be similarly confused. Let me help.

Just as not everyone on the right is an ideologue, so is it on the left. Proportions, of course, will vary over time.

Poking around the 10:10 organization it is rather obvious to the practiced eye that we are dealing with a species of left wing ideologue. These aren't liberal policy wonks, they are ideologues who see the Truth and burn with the passion that knowing that Truth seems to impart.

(I've had some interesting discussions with the type. Point out that forced abortions a la China violate basic Western concepts of human rights and you will usually find they can't wrap their heads around the concept of anything trumping "too many people". Point out that this or that little item isn't really true or accurate and they will point out that it "works" and advances Truth. If that sounds familiar, it is - recall the lies over the Death Panels. All ideologues lie (or uncritically pass on lies) - left or right, ideology and reality will always diverge.)

Anyway, you and folks like Steve and Fox want to be outraged and want to want to believe liberals want to kill you and nothing will likely change your minds. Others might want to consider the possibility that naive and inexperienced folks fired with ideals and blinded by ideology might be led down the garden path by a successful writer many years their senior and capable of bringing in name talent and lots of production resources. As I pointed out in a post above, you had an adult-free closed loop (which, Steve is what we had with Mr. O'Keefe and his plan to entrap the CNN reporter. The difference is that one person in his loop decided he didn't want to go to jail).

All this, of course, has nothing to do with the very real problems that result from our lack of a coherent energy policy. If all the Middle East produced was dates, the WTC would still be standing, a lot of folks would still be alive, our budgets would have less of a hole, and conservatives would be left with China as the Enemy du jour. Then there is a changing climate.

"Trouble is, if I enumerate all the reasons why it's a silly comparison, you'll just disappear - as you always do, when your beads have been well and truly read."

Hi Steve, I try to respond to valid points but there are limits to what one can do when we are dealing with ideology. If beliefs are existential there are limits and then the shark get jumped (as with what has to be, by this time, the faux outrage at a video in which no rug rats were actually harmed). By now it should be clear that this is a handy way for some to deal with energy policy without their having to bother with actually knowing anything about energy policy.

Meanwhile opportunity cost rears its head and the John Deere calls from the barn.

I would say it has nothing directly to do with liberalism. I was horrified by it and I'm sure plenty of other liberals were horrified by it. Being liberal doesn't make you a sociopath who laughs at snuff films.

I suppose very obliquely it could be said to have something to do with liberalism in that it is only possible for something like that to be made and published in a world that has embraced some liberal ideas in regards to freedom of speech and some liberal anti-traditionalist prejudices.

al:
I don't think I've lead a sheltered life. I don't know what Sylvester Stallone has to do with it; I have seen motion pictures including Rocky and Rocky II. The only thing vaguely like this that I've ever seen is that famous snuff film of the execution/beheading that went viral on the internet a few years ago. That was far more horrifying since as far as I knew it was real. The PSA being an attempt at humor may be subjectively horrifying depending on how the viewer takes it, I suppose. I tried to think how I would have reacted had they just shown explosions like the old Monty Python show without gore--I think I would have been disturbed rather than horrified. Either way the film would seem to have been taking pleasure and finding humor in murder. It reminds me of the Hannibal Lector books/films not including Silence of the Lambs which I liked. Gory things, surgeries and autopsies and so on, don't bother me. I didn't think it was "yucky" I thought it was horrifying.

Hey Al (and the rest of the CC alarmists), when global cooling comes (like the rest of science is predicting) will alarmists (sheep) such as yourself advocate for more carbon emissions to "rewarm" the planet?

1. The fact that the people who made this film thought it was a legitimate thing to do had to do with their commitment to their ideology concerning man-caused global warming and the urgency and possibility of stopping it. (See the quotations of their own statements as to why it was justified from the Guardian article.)

2. Their ideology concerning man-caused global warming and the urgency and possibility of stopping it is a species of liberalism.

Therefore,

3. The fact that the people who made this film thought it was a legitimate thing to do had to do with their commitment to a species of liberalism.

Chris and Foxfier are doing the yeoman's work, here. Yeah, it's good *as far as it goes* that those AGW guys called it disgusting, etc. Okay, fine. But their examples of tu quoques are _wretched_ and they move to them so indecently quickly that it's like the "you guys are so bad" point is their real message. It's ridiculous. And I didn't even know that Monckton's "Hitler Youth" remark was made about people who were chanting and disrupting his speech. Well, for crying out loud! And the global warming people call what he did "the worst." Okay, I'll see 'em and raise 'em five: If that's the _worst_, then they're a pair of ideologue idiots to compare it to this video. In fact, such a comparison only shows that they totally lack a sense of proportion, which is what the making of the video shows, too, about other AGW folks.

Climate change is really killing real people right now, and will kill a lot more even if we take radical action to mitigate it. If we don't, and burn all the coal we can recover, things will be far, far worse than that in the coming decades and centuries, and for thousands of years to come. No movie, and one can see far worse gore in any multiplex, compares in the slightest to the real suffering caused by climate change and by our dependence on carbon-based fuels, be that deaths from pollution, deaths in coal mines, or all the dead and maimed in wars over the control of oil. And the worst is yet to come. Talk about a lack of a sense of proportion. As to the tu quoques, they detract somewhat from the sense of disgust that ought to be conveyed, but in Romm's defense, I will only say that the thread was rapidly descended upon by legions of denialists fond of expressing the same sentiments you express here, only more venomously. Romm revised it afterwards, and it blunted his renunciation of this video. No one likes to be compared to Hitler or Mao, and the next climate scientist who is threatened with death won't be the first. People in the trenches tend to lack the detachment that you would demand of your ideological foes.

This isn't about liberalism or conservatism - there's nothing liberal in wanting to pass the land on to your posterity more or less as you found it, and nothing conservative in choosing to parch, scorch, or inundate it in the pursuit of profit and temporary convenience. It's a shame that this cause attracts so many communists, but it's a shame too that American conservatism has become the deranged, reality-denying political arm of the fossil-fuel industry.

Climate change is really killing real people right now, and will kill a lot more even if we take radical action to mitigate it.

Prove it. Good grief, give some sort of evidence.

All we have is a claim with a lot of KNOWN fraud behind it, which just so happens to require pretty much exactly the same thing as the last half-dozen crisises, the supposed supporters of which do not even change their own behavior in response to.

Talk about a lack of a sense of proportion.

Yes. You're talking about having folks jump in with a literally totalitarian scheme because a theory that is at best disputed says bad things will happen if they don't.

It's a shame that this cause attracts so many communists

It attracts so many who use to be communists for the same reason that Communism attracted so many of that sort-- it's an excuse to take power over people, a secular religion where they get to write the commandments, and they can force everyone to convert-- after all, it's For Their Own Good!

Lydia,
your little elegant syllogism is valid, but not sound. Premise 2 is the problem.
Man-caused global warming is not an ideology, it is a very well confirmed scientific hypothesis/fact, though, unfortunately, some scienticts have made exagerrated or too alarmistic claims in the past. Nor is the belief in the urgency and possibility of stopping man-caused global warming a "species of liberalism". The conservation of God's creation should be a natural goal for conservative Christians as well. However, many (not all!) of them are blinded by a radical (non-religious, non-conservative) free-market ideology. Here the word seems appropriate indeed.

Climate change is really killing real people right now, and will kill a lot more even if we take radical action to mitigate it.

No, a lot of groups like 10:10 make that claim but there is no proof. Even the vaunted satellite temperature readings are now in doubt due to some faulty sensors. Adding to what Foxfier said, it's not just fraud, it's incompetence, limited historical data, and over reliance on faulty computer models. If warming is killing people now, then it was really killing people during the Medieval Optimum which was warmer and obviously not caused by man.

No movie, and one can see far worse gore in any multiplex, compares in the slightest to the real suffering caused by climate change and by our dependence on carbon-based fuels, be that deaths from pollution, deaths in coal mines, or all the dead and maimed in wars over the control of oil.

CO2, which is considering the main pollutant by the AGW folks, is not a pollutant.

Deaths in coal mines have occurred for centuries. If you want to still be burning wood, more power to you. Oh, and there were 69 coal mine deaths in 2006-2007. That's not a major death toll. Maybe you need some perspective.

Wars are fought for all sorts of reasons. Some magical source of unlimited energy will not resolved that. When the main energy source was wood and water, there were still wars.

Man-caused global warming is not an ideology, it is a very well confirmed scientific hypothesis/fact, though, unfortunately, some scienticts have made exagerrated or too alarmistic claims in the past.

Well, this discussion is over. There can't be any discussion when one is so blinded to counter arguments and the limits of science.

Grobi and Cyrus both are using the "The Cause is so Critical that lies, exaggerations, half truths, and Communist like conformist thinking must be overlooked or glossed over."

Your "lot of known fraud" amounts to a couple of stolen e-mails between a few climate scientists who discuss pimping some diagrams and statistics. Good grief, is this your evidence? There is unethical behavior in science, but so what? This doesn't make the theory of global warming a "theory that is at best disputed". Almost nobody in the field disputes the fact of man-made global warming, there is only disagreement about the extent. Just read recent volumes of "Science" or "Nature", instead of the conspiracy nuts you prefer. There are, of course some maverick scientists who deny man-made global warming, but if your life hinges on it, would you trust the few Michael Behes of climate research or the overwhelming rest of the community?

You're talking about having folks jump in with a literally totalitarian scheme

It does not lead to a "literally totalitarian scheme", when you try to enforce by democratic means a change in energy politics (to abandon coal-fired power plants, to subsidize wind, water and solar energy, to introduce prizes which dsiplay the real costs of fossil energies, to demand the production of energy-saving vehicles and so on). What the hell has this in common with Hitler or Mao? (Cyrus made the point very well.)

It's a shame that this cause attracts so many communists. It attracts so many who use to be communists for the same reason that Communism attracted so many of that sort-- it's an excuse to take power over people, a secular religion where they get to write the commandments, and they can force everyone to convert-- after all, it's For Their Own Good!

Many communists are attracted by environmentalism, some 9/11 truthers are attracted by climate change denialism (check out e.g. http://www.rockcreekfreepress.com), so what? My suspicion is that truth movement and denialism share many things: bumbledom, a complete disregard of common sense and idolatry of deeply implanted prejudices - but I wouldn't base an argument on it.

as well as people who make snuff movies about blowing up kids and anyone else who disagrees with them.

There, Cyrus, fixed that for ya'.

Thanks, Cyrus, I think I understand exactly what you're saying.

I notice that you don't admit how lousy the attempted tu quoques were. You know, the ones that your links called "the worst" and implied were just as bad as this film. That's okay. You don't have to say what you don't believe.

And no, of course, by the way, I don't believe that driving my car is making the planet warm up, killing 300,000 people a year, and whatever. You could have guessed that, though, but I imagine Steve wasn't trying to get us to debate that here but was trying to get people like you to recognize the _very scary_ totalitarian impulses in your own (according to you, politically unclassifiable) movement.

Chris, who are you to attest incompetence to the vast majority of professional climate researchers? Do you have you some expertise in the field? Sorry, I'm just curious.
By the way: In China, each year thousands of people die in coal mining accidents (4,749 in 2006, see Wikipedia "mining accident"). That's a major death toll. Maybe you need some perspective.
Even if we suppose, that there is no man-made warming: The resources of oil, coal and many other raw materials are limited. Don't you think there is some responsibility towards future generations to use these materials in a more careful way? That the scarceness of these materials won't be a major (and probably the most important) cause of future wars, is an opinion you have almost exlusively.
Neither I nor Cyrus glossed over "lies, exaggerations, half truths, and Communist like conformist thinking." The only thing we were emphasizing is that the fact that some communists or fraudsters share the idea of man-made global warming doesn't show it to be false. Fair enough, isn't it?

Grobi, I hope you can see the level of mistrust last year's revelations in the UK and at Penn State have engendered.

Consider the arc of my opinion on climate change. When the agitation first began, I was skeptical. But over the years of reading, arguing with people, looking into certain claims, etc., I came around to acceptance that the scientific consensus was a real one (which, of course, does not mean it is correct). So you could say I moved perceptibly toward your position. I always kept in mind the plain pulverizing fact (discernible in any narrative of major scientific discovery and refinement) that human scientific consensus can often be quite wrong. I'll note, for instance, that the whole enthusiasm for the Human Genome and the central importance of the genetic code in DNA (which was bread and butter for schoolchildren and college students of my age) is in the process of being absolutely laid to waste by more current research. So, while still skeptical of grandiose claims about the final state of "the science," I had come to view climate change as real, man-made and serious business.

Then came a series of revelations of open fraud by some very influential members of this consensus; and (perhaps even more importantly) the subsequent intransigence of most of the rest of the members of that consensus, to even acknowledge that there was a problem. Walter Russell Mead (who accepts man-made climate change as a real and pressing problem) has blogged extensively on this: the blackout of coverage of the scandal by mainstream media, the stonewalling, the intransigence toward skeptics of any stripe, etc.

So now I'm at the point where I don't know what to think about climate change, but I know sure as shootin' that I can't trust climate scientists. If the honest folks among them are aiming to actually persuade instead of hector and browbeat, they've done a really poor job of it.

Your "lot of known fraud" amounts to a couple of stolen e-mails between a few climate scientists who discuss pimping some diagrams and statistics. Good grief, is this your evidence? There is unethical behavior in science, but so what? This doesn't make the theory of global warming a "theory that is at best disputed". Almost nobody in the field disputes the fact of man-made global warming, there is only disagreement about the extent. Just read recent volumes of "Science" or "Nature", instead of the conspiracy nuts you prefer. There are, of course some maverick scientists who deny man-made global warming, but if your life hinges on it, would you trust the few Michael Behes of climate research or the overwhelming rest of the community?

I'm guessing you never seen the interview with Philip Jones, former director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which was where this scandal took place. Here it is:

In this BBC interview, Jones admits that "from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming."

He says Researchers think temperatures recorded at various weather stations around the world, supplying the raw data on which climate change's claims and projections are made, and are the very foundation upon which Global Warming as a theory are based, are "often caused by local factors rather than global change."

Jones says he has had trouble "keeping track" of all raw data and information related to and on the temperature history and what the projections have been based.

Jones also concedes the possibility that the Medieval Warm Period undercuts the notion of unprecedented global warming in our time. While he says that there are few climate records for the tropics and the southern hemisphere during medieval times, and thus no way of showing definitely (at least at with our present knowledge and technology) that the Medieval Warm Period affected not just Europe and North America but the whole world, he nevertheless says: "Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented."

He also says:

"Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different.

"I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998."

"So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other."

So how can the warming rate for all four warming periods be identical if the primary driver is CO2? Obviously the amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere is different for all those periods, and yet we don't see this in the temperature record.

He was then asked,

"Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?"

and he replied,

"Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

In the same BBC interview when asked what it means when scientists say "the debate on climate change is over," he said. "I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this," Jones said. "This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the ... past as well."

So Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the main provider of data related to global temperature, that has been used as the proof for manmade global warming, admits here that manmade global warming is not an established scientific fact, and the claim by politicians and enviromentalists that only idiots, kooks and deniers of scienctic truth are against the idea of global warming has thus been disproved.

Paul's close to my own view. All the asking for people's climate research creds is silly. I've yet to meet anyone who has done his own double-blind research on the subject. (And that there is little double-blind research compared to weaksauce models is another worthwhile subject), so we are left with the question of whom do we trust. Even us knuckle-draggers can extend a little. The globe is warming? I can buy that. Man contributes to it? I'll grant temporarily to see where you are going with it. Man contributes most or significantly to it? Hmmm, my spidey sense is tingling. "The debate is over, the science is in!"? Crap. Kyoto will fix it? Crap. "Well, gee shouldn't we do it anyway given limited resources and the threat of war?" Disingenuous megacrap. It's a real tip of the hand when that last part comes in that sends the trust level plummeting.

Another example of why folks classify the AGW business as a liberal ideology-- standard lefty tactics of projecting exactly what they're guilty of on others. (The Rules for Radical guy suggested that, didn't he?)

We've got climategate.
We've got Watt's ongoing series of clearly wrong temperature stations. (Hey, the backside of an air conditioner IS warming!)Hiding their calculations when using known-bad data. (That's not proper science, at all.)We've got the raw data being "adjusted." (That's the raw data from fewer and fewer stations, which are in more and more urban areas, and which have been shown to often be improperly positioned even then...which they then adjust.)

It's a real tip of the hand when that last part comes in that sends the trust level plummeting.

Bingo, bingo, and bingo. And I would add--please note how many people have pulled that _very_ move in this thread. Go ahead. Just go back and count. I have heard it now so many times I've lost count: "Well, heh, heh, even if all that about man-caused global warming _is_ wrong or _were_ wrong, we should do all these things for other reasons anyway, so..."

Man-caused global warming is, as far as I can tell, like the theory that jumping gremlins make raindrops fall. It's not logically impossible, but we have a pretty good idea of why raindrops fall, and it doesn't look like gremlins are needed. The Medieval warm period is sort of like a certified gremlin-free zone where, whaddaya know?, the raindrops fall just the same.

"Well, heh, heh, even if all that about man-caused global warming _is_ wrong or _were_ wrong, we should do all these things for other reasons anyway, so..."

Since I think those other reasons are more valid than the theoretical consequences of global warming, I just skip straight to those reasons. I'm not sure why that is an offense against truth and justice. Since I've never seen you try to respond to those other reasons, I can only conclude that you think they are false or you think they are true and simply don't care. Either way, it would be nice to see an attempted argument for why you dismiss them.

Since I've never seen you try to respond to those other reasons, I can only conclude that you think they are false or you think they are true and simply don't care.

We don't respond to them because generally they are an obvious attempt to have it both ways? They make a case that we need draconian action NOW...but oh yeah, even if the entire reason we need BIG ACTION NOW!!! is wrong, here's some very mild views on why I think it's a good idea to go in the same direction.

IIRC, this site has had posts on the need to get off of middle eastern oil before, and "let's give our kids the best stuff we can" is generally utter pap, the argument form of stuffing one's bra. Unless someone is arguing "screw the kids," it's at best emotional appeal and at worst poisoning the well. For that matter, "waste not, want not" is highly generic-- simple conservation is probably better observed by a random selection of three dozen "denialists" than by the top three dozen climate change evangelists!

We're not going to find the next big resource by shutting down the economy, or any of the other 'solutions' that AGW believers keep wanting.

And no, of course, by the way, I don't believe that driving my car is making the planet warm up, killing 300,000 people a year, and whatever. You could have guessed that, though, but I imagine Steve wasn't trying to get us to debate that here but was trying to get people like you to recognize the _very scary_ totalitarian impulses in your own (according to you, politically unclassifiable) movement.

Lydia, fine. I acknowledge them. There's nothing in the least unique about the totalitarian impulses among climate change activists. Nothing at all. The impulse is found in every movement attempting to bring about significant change. It's a human trait, not a 'liberal' one. Given how often you and your allies have been accused of fascist tendencies, I'd think you'd be aware of that.

Man-caused global warming is, as far as I can tell, like the theory that jumping gremlins make raindrops fall. It's not logically impossible, but we have a pretty good idea of why raindrops fall, and it doesn't look like gremlins are needed. The Medieval warm period is sort of like a certified gremlin-free zone where, whaddaya know?, the raindrops fall just the same.

You're mistaken. The first problem is that, as best as can be determined, the MWP wasn't global, and wasn't as warm as the present day. The second is that and even if it were, it would no more demonstrate the impossibility of anthropogenic warming than existence of fires caused by lightning disproves the existence of arson. The radiative properties of CO2 are perfectly well understood and have been for over a century. Increasing its fraction of the atmosphere can't not cause warming. It's basic, repeatable physics, demonstrable in a lab and viewable from space.

Mr. Cella:
There were allegations of fraud, not revelations. Even if fraud at CRU and Penn were demonstrated, and repeated inquiries have failed to find any, it would not disprove anthropogenic climate change, which is at this point supported by too many independent lines of inquiry. Scientists are, to be sure, poor at communicating with the public for a number of reasons, not least because they're spreading a message that the vast majority of us simply don't want to believe is true.

Phantom Blogger:
Yes, I've read the Phil Jones interview. What Jones actually said was that the increase in measured global temperature over that fifteen year span did not meet the standard of 95% confidence, but only just. Over sixteen years, it does, and over any period longer than that, as well. Other datasets, such as GISS, which include the polar regions CRUTEM does not, are statistically significant over that period. What the interviewer did was a clear example of cherry-picking - Jones's answer was an example of scientific reticence and precision leading to material for the unscrupulous.

The surface temperature record is not the basis of "global warming theory" (properly speaking, there is no such theory). Warming was predicted on the basis of physics long before various agencies in the US, UK, and elsewhere began compiling global temperature datasets in the 1970s.

The whole attack on the surface temperature record is misguided, really. No bias has been found in it, no matter how it's parsed - with or without dropped stations, urban stations, high latitude stations, high altitude stations, what have you. It matches up closely with the two satellite records, and we have reams of other evidence that the planet is warming, from phenological data of earlier springs, to earlier ice-out and later ice-in dates, to melting glaciers. The planet simply is warming. Watt's surfacestation project (where's that paper you promised us, Tony) is an exercise in well-poisoning and innuendo, not science.

Did he just flat out deny a ton of offered facts? From original sources, even?

Cyrus, you keep on making claims and not backing them up. How about some support for your claims?

Watt's surface station project shows that the data being measured is tainted. Flat out, this cannot be denied--the data is not being measured in the manner required to meet standards. That is a BASIC element of science-- make sure your assumptions about the base data is correct.

It's like someone's doing a study on sunburn in blondes, and they selected only folks with dark skin.

Chris, who are you to attest incompetence to the vast majority of professional climate researchers? Do you have you some expertise in the field? Sorry, I'm just curious.

Do you? This sounds like the "My expert can beat up your expert" argument. History is filled with examples of "scientific consensus" being wrong starting with the sun goes around the earth scientific consensus.

By the way: In China, each year thousands of people die in coal mining accidents (4,749 in 2006, see Wikipedia "mining accident"). That's a major death toll. Maybe you need some perspective.

Which says more about the safety of Chinese mines than actual mine safety. People die at all sorts of jobs. I guess we should never mine. Since the lumber industry is about at the same fatality rates as mining, I assume we shouldn't cut timber either. Or run electric lines since that job is in the top 10. Let me know how you like living outdoors. The point of this argument is baffling.

The resources of oil, coal and many other raw materials are limited. Don't you think there is some responsibility towards future generations to use these materials in a more careful way?

Of course I think they should be used in a responsible manner. Tell me where it's being wasted? And what makes you think you are better than someone else in saying how those resources are to be used? I'll bet everyone should decide which leads to the wonderful Communists being on board.

That the scarceness of these materials won't be a major (and probably the most important) cause of future wars, is an opinion you have almost exlusively.

My point was that people fight for a variety of reasons and that solving the issue of limited energy resources would not mean peace in our time. Actually, most renewable energy sources require rare earth minerals (REM), which shockingly will have to be mined and are in limited supply. China has already started cutting back on shipments of their supplies of those material to hold onto them. But, it's not even REMs. You still need steel, aluminum, etc. It's all going to require mining and other resources.

The only thing we were emphasizing is that the fact that some communists or fraudsters share the idea of man-made global warming doesn't show it to be false. Fair enough, isn't it?

I didn't said it invalidated the theory because they were involved. But, you barely mentioned them and then proceeded into how this Cause is so important that what they do or say is unimportant. I don't hold to that.

Did he just flat out deny a ton of offered facts? From original sources, even?

Increasing its fraction of the atmosphere can't not cause warming. It's basic, repeatable physics, demonstrable in a lab and viewable from space.

Cyrus, my mass can't not attract the planet Jupiter. This is basic physics. And so? So nothing. It doesn't mean that I'm causing the planet Jupiter to crash into the earth and that Something Must Be Done.

We're not going to find the next big resource by shutting down the economy, or any of the other 'solutions' that AGW believers keep wanting.

We're not going to find any next energy resource if we aren't looking for one. Since you brought up poisoning the well, you might want to retract your delusional nonsense about shutting down the economy.

Tell me where it's being wasted?

Have you seen how many SUV's are on the road? If "drill baby drill" wasn't an actual party slogan, one might accidentally think that conservatives want to conserve resources.

And what makes you think you are better than someone else in saying how those resources are to be used?

The same thing that lets me warn an alcoholic before he drinks himself into an early grave.

Hey, look! He did another reference free post! How come it's the horrible unscientific deniers who actually offer scientific evidence?

We're not going to find any next energy resource if we aren't looking for one.

Yes, nobody is looking for new energy sources, because oil is dirt cheap and easy to find everywhere!

Since you brought up poisoning the well, you might want to retract your delusional nonsense about shutting down the economy.

No, I will not retract a valid description of what is minimally required to meet the proposed reductions of AGW believers.

Have you seen how many SUV's are on the road?

So? Why are you on the internet? Do you have ANY IDEA how much energy is used on this? You should be reading books and other (possibly hand-)printed materials, and only during daylight hours, since that has a much lower consumption of energy.
(of course, the irony is how many of those SUVs have leftist and 'conservation' bumper stickers, but I digress....)

If "drill baby drill" wasn't an actual party slogan, one might accidentally think that conservatives want to conserve resources.

*cough* It isn't a party slogan, first off; secondly, obtaining resources close to home is a good tactic to conserve resources, since they don't have to be moved around.

Conservatives, in general, are intelligent enough to figure out that "conserving resources" is not an end to itself-- not wasting resources is an important consideration, but "conserving" for the sake of "conserving" is rather pointless. There's nothing magical about the way things are right now, any more than there's something magical about something just because it's different.

Oh! Wait, I forgot, "conserve" has to be "do exactly what the self-proclaimed environmentalists say is best, and no other tactic will work."

We might as well bite the bullet. Let's do the experiment that has been pleading to get done. Starting now, everyone on the planet has to stop work in any capacity (other than breathing) that produces CO2. At the end of the year, we can collect the data to see if the temperature has gone down - if anyone is still alive. This is THE experiment that any scientist who had control over the variables would logically perform. Short of that, everything else is an indirect result.

No, I will not retract a valid description of what is minimally required to meet the proposed reductions of AGW believers.

Then you are simply lost in your own raving delusion. Which you've proved multiple times already, because nowhere have I claimed to be an expert on the science, nowhere have I claimed that I support anything more radical than a move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, for the modest reasons I've already given. Further, nothing in my position requires that I be against energy use per se, only the wasteful use of fossil fuels and taking needless risks with both the environment and national security to access those fossil fuels.

Well, it seems the 10:10 folks, you know the fringe group they are, have lost Sony UK and Kyocera as sponsors. Also, they pulled down their initial apology and have a new one up on their site.

Have you seen how many SUV's are on the road?

Yes and there are reasons for SUV's beyond gas mileage. Also, gov't meddling with fuel standards and other requirements are reasons for them taking off. Plus, one can make a convincing case that a Hummer is actually more environmentally friendly than a Prius. But, let's assume you are correct and they are hugely wasteful. To really address your concerns of wasteful transportation methods, the gov't should dictate the size and type of vehicle everyone is allowed to drive. Then only one model of each type should be built.

BTW, I agree with Foxfier, why are you using a computer. Between the electricity usage and materials used to make a computer, you are being pretty wasteful.

Did he just flat out deny a ton of offered facts? From original sources, even?
Cyrus, you keep on making claims and not backing them up. How about some support for your claims?
Watt's surface station project shows that the data being measured is tainted. Flat out, this cannot be denied--the data is not being measured in the manner required to meet standards. That is a BASIC element of science-- make sure your assumptions about the base data is correct.

My time is very, very short. That probably means I should just hold my tongue, but this was an occasion where I, unfortunately, could not resist. I recommend you head over to www.skepticalscience.com to start with, and invaluable site with a carefully-maintain, non-polemical, apolitical tone that strives, mostly successfully, to stick strictly to what the science says. Regarding surface temperature data, their post http://skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm is instructive. Note that it is available in basic, intermediate, and advanced versions. To summarize, though, no warming bias can be statistically detected in the surface temperature record, this is not surprising since the trend it exhibits is very similar to that seen in the satellite record, and this whole argument about poorly-sited stations depends on a misunderstanding of how temperature trends are derived. Briefly, for the purpose of determining a temperature trend, the fact that a station is poorly-sited for the purpose of providing accurate temperature readings, while it may be important to local gardeners troubled by frost, is not necessarily significant. So long as the error is consistent, and the station history is known, that is enough. What is significant is the departure from the thirty year baseline, whatever that baseline is, whether or not it reflects the actual conditions (a slippery concept) with the utmost accuracy. It's the distinction between accuracy and precision. Poor siting affects the former, not necessarily the latter, and the latter is what matters for discerning climatic trends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision

I've stayed up far too late already. This is bad netiquette on my part, but I must beg off. The infant will be up in 6 hours whether I'm ready or not, and the toddler not long after. Good night, and if anyone is interested, I can resume this later, though you're better served going to other sites to converse with people more knowledgeable than I.

Joy, another self-linking site that takes the bad data and...um.... gets more bad data. Yay! More saying the same thing, but louder, this time! As if the "NOAA says they didn't do anything wrong" thing already been responded to! (short form: NOAA says that putting thermometers by exhausts actually has a cold bias. Which, I suppose, would explain their adjusting it up.)

The information and facts I quoted came from Phil Jones himself, who is one of the most highly cited scientists on the topic of Global Warming (amongst amateur's and professionals alike), the words came out of his own mouth and were not in any way distorted (the interview was performed by the BBC which is anything but an enemy of enviromentalist's). He was at the time notable for being responsible for maintaining the time series of the instrumental temperature record, before leaving the job.

US Government admits satellite temperature readings “degraded.” All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high. The fault was first detected after a tip off from an anonymous member of the public to climate skeptic blog, Climate Change Fraud

Caught in the center of the controversy is the beleaguered taxpayer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis has now confirmed that the fast spreading story on the respected climate skeptic blog is true....Great Lakes users of the satellite service were the first to blow the whistle on the wildly distorted readings that showed a multitude of impossibly high temperatures. NOAA admits that the machine-generated readings are not continuously monitored so that absurdly high false temperatures could have become hidden amidst the bulk of automated readings.

In one example swiftly taken down by NOAA after my first article, readings for June and July 2010 for Lake Michigan showed crazy temperatures off the scale ranging in the low to mid hundreds - with some parts of the Wisconsin area apparently reaching 612 F. With an increasing number of further errors now coming to light the discredited NOAA removed the entire set from public view.

NOTICE (8/11/2010): Due to degradation of a satellite sensor used by this mapping product, some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures. Please disregard these images as anomalies. Future images will not include data from the degraded satellite and images caused by the faulty satellite sensor will be/have been removed from the image archive.

I should state though that I do believe in Global Warming to a degree, its just the apocalyptic claims made by some that bother me.

Plus, one can make a convincing case that a Hummer is actually more environmentally friendly than a Prius.

This is like staring into the abyss, and the abyss is staring back with an oily grin.

Where's your response to anything I said?

You're not saying anything that remotely resembles my position, so I'm not going to respond to it. Just because you can manipulate my position into something unrecognizable, I'm not required to treat it as accurate or honest.

You've not made an argument, a decent suggestion on how to head for your goals...

Okay, start with a 15% tax increase on fossil fuels, gradually phased in over the next five years, dedicated solely to funding renewable energy sources, with exceptions made for public transport industries and diesel fuel to help the trucking industry. You could sell it as a new Star Wars project, except it is an economic shield instead of a military one.

Oh so reasonable... unless you're accusing folks of "raving delusions" or accusing them of expecting you to be an expert on the science of the matter.

I said it was a raving delusion to believe that climate change advocates are trying to "shut down the economy", which is at a minimum no more hyperbolic than your statement. As for expecting me to be an expert, you've been demanding references and obsessing about scientific evidence, yet you’ve bizarrely refused to accept that my reasons have zero dependence upon whether global warming is true. Global warming could be completely, utterly, fantastically false, and my position on moving our economy towards renewable energy sources would still be justifiable.

The radiative properties of CO2 are perfectly well understood and have been for over a century. Increasing its fraction of the atmosphere can't not cause warming. It's basic, repeatable physics, demonstrable in a lab and viewable from space.

That's pretty funny. Yes, in a controlled environment, with all other things being held constant, given an atmosphere of a certain make-up, then increasing the CO2 increases the retained heat. That's just physics.

But, gee, the world isn't a controlled environment in which everything else is held constant. In the 1980's, back when I was getting Scientific American, there was a long article on how the world had at least 2 different mechanisms in place that reacted to an increase in CO2 or an increase in temperature, a reaction that modified something ELSE in the world whose effect was to reduce available CO2 in the atmosphere or reduce the temperature. One was that a warmer ocean would grab onto a higher percentage of CO2 out of the air and sequester it. I don't remember the others. Have we learned more about these processes? Certainly. Have we determined that there are not other, as yet undiscovered processes that will kick in at higher temps, or higher levels of CO2, or greater amounts of sunspots, or changes in the magnetic field, or who knows what else? Given how much we DON'T know about sunspots and the sun's cycles, and about the magnetic field, and the Earth's core, it seems pretty nutty to suggest that we know that there are no other heating and cooling mechanisms involved than the ones we now understand.

While the Earth systems are extremely complex, I don't believe that we can NEVER understand enough about them to predict accurately whether a man-made trend will cause global warming or not, and whether a human reduction in CO2 could reverse the warming. But the claim that we know it NOW seems a bit of a stretch at this point, from the picture of the scientific community that we have right now.

Step2, I agree that it makes sense to move toward renewable energy sources, regardless of whether global warming is occurring. I tend to think that people would encourage the move in that direction more strongly if there weren't a lot of incidental and messy politics getting in the way of good common sense. Nevertheless, there are elements of the environmental crowd that would be perfectly happy shutting down the economy, because they think the economy is prime target #2 or #3 for causing the problems. Maybe they are somewhat unrepresentative of the whole body of environmentalists.

By the way, I might actually support your 15% increase tax, as long as it is only used as a loan that needs to be paid back when the developed technology is robust.

Why does nobody on the environmentalist side ever appreciate it when I say in these contexts that I totally agree that it would be great to be less dependent on Arab oil and that _therefore_ we need to increase the use of nuclear power in the U.S. and open the ANWR? Can't figure it out, somehow. It's not a popular answer.

Tony, I also think you left something out when you mentioned environmentalists willing to shut down the economy: Plenty of environmentalists dislike the developed world's economy, period, because they have a romantic love of what they view as a more "pristine" earth in which man doesn't do all the things that really are _good for man_. How can you reason with people who think that composting toilets are great because they're _natural_ and need less fresh water to operate? Seriously, I think you're leaving out the substantial proportion of this movement that is plain, unvarnished, anti-development, anti-technology, and anti-human and would be just as happy if human flourishing were seriously damaged so long as the world and the _human_ "environment" were left in the end dirtier, smellier, more dangerous, and more like things were before man ever came along. This, as an end in itself.

You also should throw into the mix the way that "renewable energy" is a bandwagon with a feverish, political, ideological drive behind it and that these things are therefore jumped on as fads without a lot of consideration as to whether they are economically sustainable or even, ultimately, best for the environment. I read some years ago about how some towns in England were continuing recycling (or that some environmentalists wanted them to) even though they had decided that it consumed _more_ fuel and was _worse_ for the environment than just throwing the stuff away or incinerating it, because it _symbolized_ the notion of reusing, being natural, etc. These things become not only fads but something more like religious enthusiasms and rituals, which means that they are not really vetted for feasibility, practicality, being good for man, and being good for non-humans. (Consider the problem of birds and wind farms, for example.)

Steve: I didn't notice - I haven't checked the site since I posted it. I know the software holds link-rich posts. So no offense even if I had noticed. I've posted here long enough to know that.

Phantom Blogger: I would never claim the satellite record was infallible. The history of the UAH record provides ample evidence of this: Throughout the 1990s, their analysis of the satellite readings comforted those of us (myself among them) who suspected AGW was overblown or non-existent. Sadly, though, and this was one of the nails in the coffin of my own doubts and denial, it was demonstrated in 1998 and again in 2005 that UAH had failed to correct for orbital decay, and that in doing so, the warming trend observed at the surface showed up in the UAH analysis as well. Roy Spencer and John Christy, who ran the UAH project and who a quick Google search or a perusal of the science section at a well-stocked bookstore will reveal are the opposite of global warming alarmists, accepted the analysis and modified their methods. While the warming trend shown in the UAH product is slightly smaller than that shown in GISS, HADCRU, or RSS (the other satellite analysis), it is real and pronounced. (Brief discussion and helpful graph here: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2008/04/common-climate-misconceptions-global-temperature-records/). That out of the way, the fact that the RSS and UAH products agree so closely with the surface temperature record ought to be a giant clue that the surface temperature record is valid. So too the melting ice and poleward shift of lifeforms like kudzu.

With respect to the satellite malfunction see here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Great-Lakes-satellite-temperature.htm
The erroneous record from earlier this year comes from different sensors, monitoring an entirely different spectrum, and is not part of the UAH or RSS satellite temperature products. It is not incorporated into any of the official estimates of global temperature.

Satellite records were a cornerstone of skeptical arguments for years, until it was demonstrated they were incorrectly interpreted, and that in fact they reflected warming. Now they're part of the conspiracy, too.

With respect to Jones - he simply didn't deny warming or human responsibility for it. He did a bad job in the interview by giving too much room for interpretation in the face of tendentious questioning, but scientists are generally not very media savvy. I don't have time to go into that now, though.

Tony: I just saw your post, so no time to respond to it, either. Go read Spencer Weart's "Discovery of Global Warming", read Skeptical Science - your 'God of the gaps' argument is not justified, and a slim basis for skepticism. The 97% of climate scientists who think there's a problem could be wrong, but I wouldn't bet Florida on it. The uncertainties are over peripheral issues. You should remember from high school that warmer water hold less dissolved gas, and as I wrote, the decrease in outgoing long-wave radiation is observable from orbit not only in a test tube. So too are the stratospheric cooling, and greater night-time and polar warming that theory predicted before it was observed.

Depends on who gets to define "renewable." Right now, dams aren't considered renewable in Washington State-- basically because they work to well, as our news radio endlessly repeated some poor SOB admitting. Nobody would invest in stuff with a bad return when they could invest in a good return.

Burning wood and other biomass for fuel would be a renewable resource, although likely unpopular.

I'm interested in the work they're doing with algae that makes bio-diesel, myself.

Not a big fan of adding more taxes, though-- government simply isn't very effective, since it has a bad habit of raiding the cookie jar to make the neighbor kids like it.

How about nuke power? Follow France (not a phrase I'll say often....) and start recycling our nuke waste. Borrow their designs for... Breeder reactors, I think they're called? (Have to get rid of Carter's ban on the rector type.) Don't have the paper work here for most of the details.

Lydia

Why does nobody on the environmentalist side ever appreciate it when I say in these contexts that I totally agree that it would be great to be less dependent on Arab oil and that _therefore_ we need to increase the use of nuclear power in the U.S. and open the ANWR?

No idea. File it with a thousand other people-questions, including why the person you passed with generally speed up, pass you and zoom into the distance, and then you'll end up on their tail again twenty miles down the road. Also, why hotdogs are sold in 10 and buns in 6.

Is that they're campaign?!! REALLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE! It's perfectly ok to make a video where children get MURDERED for not worrying about carbon emissions?!!!?!?!??!?!?!?! REALLY?!?!?!!? REALLY!?!?!?!?!?!?! How is this arguing the case to get behind this??? I'm sorry but this planet is ENDING like it or not we can do things to make it better for now, but the human SOUL is what people should be more concerned about because death is eternal. A commercial where people just murder someone else for not being in complete agreement?!?! This commercial is like communist! I'm shocked... just shocked....

People say this is an opinion thing because they say no pressure... really?! REALLY?! Welcome to a dictatorship, do what we say or we will KILL you, and pretend we're still the good guys and that there is "no pressure". I haven't seen a display so evil since Frieza from Dragonball Z. This is just disgusting.

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